There was his little scanty travelling clothes upon him. There was his
little scanty box outside in the shivering wind, which I was going to
carry for him down to the steamboat, as the old man wouldn't hear of
allowing a sixpence coach-money. Mrs Boffin, then quite a young woman
and pictur of a full-blown rose, stands him by her, kneels down at the
fire, warms her two open hands, and falls to rubbing his cheeks; but
seeing the tears come into the child's eyes, the tears come fast into
her own, and she holds him round the neck, like as if she was protecting
him, and cries to me, "I'd give the wide wide world, I would, to run
away with him!" I don't say but what it cut me, and but what it at the
same time heightened my feelings of admiration for Mrs Boffin. The poor
child clings to her for awhile, as she clings to him, and then, when
the old man calls, he says "I must go! God bless you!" and for a moment
rests his heart against her bosom, and looks up at both of us, as if it
was in pain--in agony. Such a look! I went aboard with him (I gave him
first what little treat I thought he'd like), and I left him when he had
fallen asleep in his berth, and I came back to Mrs Boffin. But tell
her what I would of how I had left him, it all went for nothing, for,
according to her thoughts, he never changed that look that he had looked
up at us two. But it did one piece of good. Mrs Boffin and me had no
child of our own, and had sometimes wished that how we had one. But not
now. "We might both of us die," says Mrs Boffin, "and other eyes might
see that lonely look in our child." So of a night, when it was very
cold, or when the wind roared, or the rain dripped heavy, she would
wake sobbing, and call out in a fluster, "Don't you see the poor child's
face? O shelter the poor child!"--till in course of years it gently wore
out, as many things do.'

'My dear Mr Boffin, everything wears to rags,' said Mortimer, with a
light laugh.